“What they’re being fed is this utopian line about how it’ll be great, you’ll get all this overtime because they’ll pay it – they’ll pay it”, says Merwin.
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Democrats from the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County overwhelmingly supported the bill, as did some Democrats from more inland districts, such as as Assembly members Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno, and Jose Medina, D-Riverside. Jerry Brown then farm workers will be entitled to receive time and a half pay if they work more than eight hours in a day or more than 40 hours in a week, and double pay if they work more than 12 hours in a day.
Agricultural employees are exempt from these requirements. The overtime laws would be phased in incrementally over four years, beginning in 2019.
The history does in fact go back almost eight decades.
The Federation’s weekly newspaper, AgAlert, claimed that “the higher cost of providing overtime pay – particularly when coupled with scheduled increases in the state minimum wage – would force farmers to reduce employee work hours to control labor costs”.
Flipping the proponents’ argument, critics said the well-intentioned measure would hurt laborers by leading to cuts in their hours and economic hardship for the farms that employ them.
The Napa County Farm Bureau opposed the bill, arguing on Facebook that it would “actually result in a loss of pay for workers”.
Isom noted that supporters of AB 1066 are very shortsighted. The union-organized rallies of farm workers who lost a day’s pay last week to travel to the Capitol. “This is a classic case of good intentions gone awry”.
California Association of Winegrape Growers Director of Government Relations Tyler Blackney: “We hope Gov”. It was the second time this summer that lawmakers considered whether to expand overtime wages to the Golden State’s estimated 800,000 farmworkers. But Brown could only do so by also suspending the phase-in of the state’s $15 minimum wage, which most believe would be politically unfeasible.
Earlier, the state Senate passed the bill, 21 to 14.
“A.B. 1066 puts California agriculture at a competitive disadvantage both domestically and internationally”.
Philip Martin, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, says there is no data on exactly who works how many hours when it comes to USA farmworkers. 1066 will only reduce the number of hours available for farm employees and thus decrease their earnings.
The California Fresh Fruit Association, along with a coalition of allied agricultural interests, now directs full attention onto the Governor’s office to urge his veto.
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“There was a special standard set for farming so that we could bring the crop in and be the leader, in California, to not only the world but the nation and that our farmworkers would be taken care of”, said Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield. Dairy families know one more component that will limit their margins by 2022 and will choose not to risk continuing to be so uncompetitive in California.
